I just wanted to point out that Cable Companies have wanted Consumer Electronics to be compatable with their networks for a long time. Cable Companies have had to buy tuners with proprietary software for years. This has costed Millions of dollars.
The new line of consumer electronics that can be supported by installing a cable card is now starting to take off. This makes good business sense. As cable companies start to gain competition from alternative providers, they are looking for ways to reduce costs. One is to reduce spending on customer premise equipment.
There is a disconnect between the cable companies and consumer electronics companies. New devices are being released weekly under the assumption that all cable networks are updated with the latest software to support these devices and the personnel who set up the accounts are trained in the special needs and configurations of these devices.
This will need to improve immediately, and the customers, such as yourselves are supporting these companies in improving their processes by establishing the consumer demand for this change. Another point is this is a relationship that is owned by the consumer electronics companies and the cable companies. Both would benefit by working more closely together.
Cable companies are interested in the success of this technology. The thought that cable companies want to provide converters to customers to make more money is not true. Converters cost $500 to $800 per unit and become obsolete within two years. Doing some quick math will tell you that the ten or so dollars per month that the company charges its customers for the lease of this converter pays back in 6+ years. Not good for companies trying to make money.

Converters cost $500 to $800 per unit and become obsolete within two years.

How do you come to that conclusion? The only thing that would make a cable box obsolete is if new technology emerges (such as HDTV which made series 1 and series 2 TiVo obsolete in my view). The cable/TV industry moves very very slowly (look how long it took for HDTV to take hold), so I don't see new crop of HDTV DVRs being obsolete by any means for years to come.

I can see these boxes staying in operation for 5-10 years if not longer. Heck some people I know who still did not go for HDTV still use their Series 1 TiVo from 7 years ago!

At $12/mo for a Moxi, supposing it lasted 7 years, and not accounting for any fee increase, a Moxi box would have brought $820. If its cost was truly $800, I grant you, that's a long time to get back your money, but I doubt it. These boxes are probably closer to sub-$500 in cost to the cable companies. Think about it, the Series 3 which is leaps and bounds better than a Moxi RETAILS for $800, so a Moxi should sell in bulk to the cable companies for $200-$400 IMHO. But I don't know for sure...

Sepia, your best bet would probably be to call TiVo tech support. They might be able help you out on that end. Good luck to you!!! Charter is coming by tomorrow and both of my CCs are not able to get the HD content of the premium channels.

Iím happy. Alldachannelsarecomingin. Yippee. There was the tech at my house, the head tech dude and some lady with a bubbly personality in the background hitting the card while also another guy on another phone somewhere Ďelseí in their company in conference with them and me. The first card after hit got channels licitly split, the second card was hit by the other guy and again by her I think, but not instant succes, but within 2 minutes all the channels came in. I asked him, so why do you think it worked this time? He said It was about getting all the people on the same page. They were kind, apologetic, sincere. I am very pleased. Anyway all is finally working here as far as my Tivo S3 goes. Good luck to the rest. Hang in there, make calls and point them, (the powers to be) to this thread. Asta Lavista Baby.

FYI, The cards that didnít work before were left in and when they (charter) came out they just made sure all the letters and numbers were correct and hit away. IOW we didnít pull them out and go one card at a time. My guess is they figured out the proper way to sync there stuff to there card in my stuff.
Iím glad I didnít give up, but sure wanted to. Thanks again Charter.

Thanks for the responses on the picture quality. Wanna hear something funny, whenever I do a CC install and I got the 161-4 error I knew things were gonna be GOOD TO GO. It's a common error and that I am unsure of, but when it goes up I know the pairing was successful and things would be up and running real soon with all the channels properly working.

I know plenty of people have been having problems, but it seems the cable companies are starting to catch on. They were probably as unprepared as can be for this cablecard onslaught. I'd imagine there are probably tons of headends around the country who hadn't done one cablecard install previous to this rollout.

I know Tivo somewhat warned them through that trade rag ad, but I'd imagine that only the higher-ups saw those articles and they probably just blew it off, and didn't send any info down the pipeline to the people that matter.

Well after a long and hard-fought battle (not really--- just several phone calls) with Charter Long Beach, they have solved the cablecard problems! PlungerMan... thanks for sticking this one out with me... good luck to all!

Oh, I see. Thanks PlungerMan!! It really is wonderful to hear that people are getting their CCs fixed by Charter or at least Charter is paying more attention to what they need to do to get this issue fixed. Let's hope that their technicians start receiving the proper training on how to install CCs in the future since I don't think the S3 will be going any where any time soon. I absolutely love the S3 with its Season Passes and would never think about giving it up now.

Oh, I see. Thanks PlungerMan!! It really is wonderful to hear that people are getting their CCs fixed by Charter or at least Charter is paying more attention to what they need to do to get this issue fixed. Let's hope that their technicians start receiving the proper training on how to install CCs in the future since I don't think the S3 will be going any where any time soon. I absolutely love the S3 with its Season Passes and would never think about giving it up now.

Yeah itís a great dvr. I am confident that Charter is on board with this. If you have a problem call Charter and point them to the folks at Long Beach Charter. I got the feeling from the head end of Charter, (spoke to several of them over this) they want this to works. They went at it and had it figured out in 2-3 days. I wouldnít worry about success with these cards now.

I too got all my channels and full HD with only one cable card present. The other card was permanently saying "Downloading Firmware..." and both receivers were disabled. So I waited (way longer than the "up to 40 minutes" it clamied on-screen), and finally took the card out.

After a little while all the channels came back with just the card in slot 1. Later when technician N put the 2nd card in, the same thing happened. So my tech support supervisor "Tito" has assured me that the card would work in the future, they just needed to get the programming fixed on their side. Basically the same story as before, but he did confirm to me that the problem was being discussed "at the company director" level and that they were working along with Tivo to solve it.

[Discussing the fate of the Ark]
Maj. Eaton: We have top men working on it now.
Indiana: Who?
Maj. Eaton: Top... men.

A coworker was talked out of ordering his cablecards from Charter in St. Louis yesterday. The CSR informed him that he'd only receive one each of the various premium channels such as HBO, SHOtime etc.

I trust this is just another example of a poorly informed rep. Anyone in the St. Louis area having any difficulties receiving all of the available channels (with the exception of the PPV and Indemand products) with a cablecard?

Anyone in the St. Louis area having any difficulties receiving all of the available channels (with the exception of the PPV and Indemand products) with a cablecard?

I'd love to get only 1 HBO and 1 Showtime! Where do I sign up? Can I also pay 5 or 6 bucks a month for them? I think that would be very nice.

If it's working properly there's no reason you wouldn't be able to get all your premium channels using a CableCARD. I'd say that the CSR was feeding your friend a line, but I don't think most CSRs care enough about the company to lie. Most likely it was a statement made out of ignorance.

Ok, so I sent an email inquiry about CC in Madison, and got the response that they weren't offering them yet. I think there was someone in this thread that had a successful install, right? I'd like to be able to tell them about my "friend" who already has them working when I read them the riot act.

Hey TK421, I did a little searching for you and found that Leo_N had success with his Charter CCs. He is located at Pell Lake, WI (don't know where that is, but maybe you do). For his post, he is on Page 7 and is post #194. Good luck with that.

A coworker was talked out of ordering his cablecards from Charter in St. Louis yesterday. The CSR informed him that he'd only receive one each of the various premium channels such as HBO, SHOtime etc.

I trust this is just another example of a poorly informed rep. Anyone in the St. Louis area having any difficulties receiving all of the available channels (with the exception of the PPV and Indemand products) with a cablecard?

Thanks,

Steve

I live in St. Louis and have Charter for my cable provider. I had a Charter tech install 2 cable cards in my Series 3 Tivo last Friday, and I receive all channels (including premiums) except PPV and InDemand. So the CSR was just plain wrong. The Charter tech told me I was the 2nd person for whom they'd installed cable cards in a Series 3 Tivo. It took him about a half hour and works fine for me.

Okay, Charter just came by and to my dismay he did not bring ANY CCs. I was upset, but since I'm sick, I just listened to him talk about CCs. Little did he know that the FCC required Charter to carry CCs when he told me that they might be getting rid of them because they were causing so much problems. He said that he could bring 10 CCs to my place and find that most of them don't work which is actually fine with me because then he and the rest of the Charter techs won't have to come to my house any more. He then continued on talking about getting a Moxi box which is so easy, but instead of debating with him, I just told him that I spent a lot of money on the S3 and want it working with the CCs in them. He then rescheduled me for tomorrow so that means that I'm not going anywhere tomorrow until the tech comes with hopefully a whole bunch of CCs.

Okay, Charter just came by and to my dismay he did not bring ANY CCs. I was upset, but since I'm sick, I just listened to him talk about CCs. Little did he know that the FCC required Charter to carry CCs when he told me that they might be getting rid of them because they were causing so much problems. He said that he could bring 10 CCs to my place and find that most of them don't work which is actually fine with me because then he and the rest of the Charter techs won't have to come to my house any more. He then continued on talking about getting a Moxi box which is so easy, but instead of debating with him, I just told him that I spent a lot of money on the S3 and want it working with the CCs in them. He then rescheduled me for tomorrow so that means that I'm not going anywhere tomorrow until the tech comes with hopefully a whole bunch of CCs.

Hah, Moxi! Don't let them get that thing anywhere near your house! It has just as many problems as the cablecards in my experience. I had one for about a year and a half. (only way to record HD at the time) So far my cablecards have been a joy compared to that pile.

Stick to your guns and throw that FCC mandate in their face. Somewhere on this board and on the Tivo site is a list of CableLabs certified devices, with the S3 on there. I'd print that out too and show it to them.

Good luck, I'm sure eventually you'll get it going. Hopefully they don't make you too miserable in the process.

Thanks Leo_N for the encouragement. Yeah, when I heard about the Moxi, I almost threw up on him. LOL I did stick the FCC mandate in his face so at least he knows about it now. I just hope tomorrow that they bring 10 or more cards so that they can just play around with it. I don't want them breaking my S3 because I have heard and experienced the CC eject button acting weird.

The Charter Rep. is at my house now. (really from East Coast Cable & Communications - subcontractor I guess) He said he did an S3 install yesterday. I am going to take that as a good sign. I will update later.

So let me get this straight. The Charter installer came to your house to do a cablecard install, but didn't bring any cablecards with him? Did he recognize that as an incredibly stupid thing to do? What did he think he was going to do when he got there?

Okay, Charter just came by and to my dismay he did not bring ANY CCs. I was upset, but since I'm sick, I just listened to him talk about CCs. Little did he know that the FCC required Charter to carry CCs when he told me that they might be getting rid of them because they were causing so much problems. He said that he could bring 10 CCs to my place and find that most of them don't work which is actually fine with me because then he and the rest of the Charter techs won't have to come to my house any more. He then continued on talking about getting a Moxi box which is so easy, but instead of debating with him, I just told him that I spent a lot of money on the S3 and want it working with the CCs in them. He then rescheduled me for tomorrow so that means that I'm not going anywhere tomorrow until the tech comes with hopefully a whole bunch of CCs.

The tech that did my install said he usually a "phone guy", and that my appointment was the first time he ever installed cable cards. He said a guy at the office checked the cable cards to make sure they would work though, and both did work fine. It took him longer to call in and wait on hold to get the cards activated than it did to actually install them.

By the way, I live in the county about 1/4 mile from Charter's headquarters, so maybe I get some different techs than you do.